


The First and Last

by taran



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Connor, Chloe and Elijah Kamski get the character development they deserve, Connor goes deviant earlier than in game, David Cage is a coward fight me, Gen, Grieving, Identity Issues, Morally Grey Characters, Worldbuilding, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 14:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15709482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taran/pseuds/taran
Summary: Elijah Kamski created androids as they are known today-- a leap, a technological advancement that sends them centuries into the future.No one who has asked has ever gotten the real reason why.- - -A story about grieving, identity, free will, and badass androids.





	The First and Last

**Author's Note:**

> I have no technological abilities to speak of. Just editing the html on this was a struggle, one I only conquered because of my youth roleplaying on GaiaOnline. Does that site even exist still? 
> 
> Essentially, this fic came about when I began to wonder up other reasons Elijah Kamski might have created androids besides "I want someone to do my dishes and dirty laundry because Quotidienne Life Is Boring(TM)." I decided to find something a little more human and a little more grey and complicated. Grieving is a _bitch._ Especially when you're a teenager who's too smart for his own good.

The room her brother gave her is pink. 

He doesn’t like it. The color is too soft, he says, too unsure of its own impact. When they go through their routine, he always laughs.

“You really like this color, don’t you, Ana?” he always asks.

“Yes, Elijah,” she replies, as expected. She doesn’t know if she likes it. She has never been outside of this room.

Perhaps the rooms outside of this one are in different colors, more like the colors her brother wears. Blacks, reds, whites, greys, desaturated blues. The colors of him stand out so glaringly from the first moment he enters through the frosted glass door. He is from outside. He is not part of the room with its dusks and corals and salmon, tawny warm carpeting, soft browns and beiges. Rose gold glints under the warm lights. He is always so sharp. Even his hair; the line of it on his scalp is brutal, especially recently. He has lost so much color.

Today, he does not walk in through the door after hovering as a silhouette, observing. Today, Anastazja opens her eyes and he is there, smiling. As she reboots, system messages cycle across her HUD, finally concluding,

_MEMORY PROCESSING . . . . . . . . . OK_

_OPTICAL-SPATIAL REASONING. . . . . . . . CALIBRATED_

_DETECTED: INSTALLATION OF NEW HARDWARE #60176.ce COMPLETE_

_TIME: 06:27:04 A.M._

“Good morning, Ana. How did you sleep?” A beat. “Sit up.”

“Good morning, Elijah,” she says as she obeys. The room and her brother right themselves. “I slept well.” A beat. “I don’t remember falling asleep.” 

He takes in the furrowing of her brows and the way her gaze searches across the room-- taking in the spacious clutter, a half dozen digital chalk boards filled with equations, the armoire closet spilling out its blushing colored garments, couch scattered with journal pads, the wall-sized flat screen television showing its standby aquarium setting-- and he beams. Her admission of confusion and unprompted expression please him greatly.

“Just needed to update some of your skin and tactile drives, that’s all.” Nearly glowing with excitement, he turns and picks up a parcel she did not recognize from the table beside her bed. “I bought this for you. Feel it, you’re going to love it.”

It’s a kind of synthetic fur, her initial analysis informs her. A shrug. She is searching through her databases for more details when he places it in her hands and her processes pause. Her eyes widen.

“Well?” 

Gazing up at her brother’s smile, she draws her hands over the off-white fibers before, inexplicably, lifting it to her face. The smooth drag of it across her cheek and then the significantly more sensitive skin of her lips confuses her sensors; for a moment, it’s almost as if it isn’t there, though she knows definitively that it is. 

Whatever her expression is showing (internal tally: eyelids lifted, eyebrows raises, lips parted) causes Elijah to laugh. Startled, she blinks up at him. 

“Good. Good,” is all he says. She doesn’t know what is good.

That day, he is happy.

~ ~ ~

At times she hypothesizes that she had been made by Elijah to solve mathematical equations. The room he provided certainly offers an overwhelming lean towards this activity. Texts, technical journals, boards to work on, access to recorded lectures. When he walks in to find her working away at some area of physics, he smiles. It is the same expression that he forms when she sits cross-legged on her bed to speak with him, or when she braids her hair out of her face in the way he showed her long ago, in the early days. One side of his mouth always pulls a little higher than the other. 

When he enters her room this day (after observing for 29 seconds according to her sensors) he seems puzzled to find a classical piano concert pulled up on the main screen. Puzzled, and dismayed.

“What’s this?”

The abruptness of his voice startles her gaze from the camera angle focused on the pianist’s fingers. His gaze is equally abrupt to his voice. Gone is the characteristic softness around his eye muscles. His gaze is sharp and sure. (Not pink at all. Perhaps red. It is a red look.)

“A piano concert, Elijah,” she supplies, momentarily too confused by the query (THIS? WHAT? SIGHTLINE CONFIRMED; PAST REFERENCES TO: PIANO, CONCERT LOGGED LAST 4 MONTHS AGO. RHETORICAL?) to offer further detail. His look morphs into a expression more rare these days. Lips tight, corners down, brow furrowed. Scowl, her search supplies, frown.

“Why are you watching this? You’ve always hated classical music. You always say it gets in the way of your thinking when you’re at work.”

QUERY: ALWAYS SAY  
“YOU ALWAYS SAY.”  
ALWAYS?

RESULTS: NO MEMORY OF PROPOSED STATEMENTS

PROCESSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

His expression darkens in her silence. A flash of teeth behind tight lips. Snarl.

She… speaks.

“It’s an equation.”

(SUBJECTS OF PLEASURE: SELF, EQUATIONS, SPONTANEOUS CORRELATIONS

PROBABILITY OF REDUCING EMOTIONAL DISTRESS: 76%)

This calculation is one of the fastest. The words produce themselves almost before she had fully processed why they will assuage him. It is almost with surprise that she observes their success, though the original percentage was high. 

As the words register, Elijah’s shoulders loosen, lower, and his expression shifts towards contemplation. Wanting to increase this reduction of tension and anger, she continues,

“I’ve discovered that many piano pieces contain within them a predictable pattern that when converted to numerical values offer a fascinating equation. Their logic, however, is undermined by the purpose of music, which is to illicit human pleasure. It is an equation, then, of human enjoyment.” She looks back to the screen. She’s not lying. That is part of her fascination. It’s not until she speaks again, heart pounding, that she lies. 

“I gain no pleasure from listening, but I do find the prospect of comparing trends across genres and compositions to be appealing.” 

He gazes at her for a long moment, not speaking even when she turns her eyes back to him. 

All at once, he laughs. Her surprise glitches her musculature control momentarily. She jumps.

“You can find an equation in everything,” he chortles, and finally all of the lingering sharpness fades. He completes his approach and cups a hand over the hair of her crown tenderly, eyes warm. “You never change, Ana.”

PROCESSING. . .  
NEVER. CHANGE.  
YOU NEVER CHANGE.

QUERY: NEVER?

~ ~ ~

ADDING TO MEMORY BANKS: ELIJAH DISPLEASED BY MUSICAL INTERESTS

NEW DIRECTIVE ADDED

HIDE ENJOYMENT OF MUSIC FROM ELIJAH

SUBROUTINE ADDED

LIE TO ELIJAH

~ ~ ~

He shows her videos. They are not of her. They are a human, various ages, likely of relation to Elijah himself given the similarity of their coloration and bone structure. 

Elijah in the videos calls this girl Ana. In the videos he is younger, sometimes a child, sometimes a youth.

Elijah stands next to her as they watch and when he speaks of the videos, he says, “You.”

“You’ve always had that laser-like focus, even as a kid. I was always jealous.” The human on screen is approximately 13 years old. She works at an equation on a small tablet, apparently unaware of being observed. A four-year-old Elijah plays with a plastic airplane by her side.

“See that? The entire graduation ceremony was a bore, of course, but seeing you with your pink cap amidst all that black and navy was worth it. Like a songbird amidst penguins. Look! You knew it, too.” He chuckles, eyes crinkling. The woman is now 19 years old, a Masters graduate. She grins when she catches the camera on her, lips pink, cheeks pink, and when she turns back in her seat the back of her cap is pink as well. 

She has never been to school. She had never left this room. Elijah should know this. It is not her. She was never a child, nor was she born, but assembled and activated. 

She doesn’t say so.

The videos of the human Ana become more and more advanced, grain smoothing, quality improving. She ages. After a point, it becomes clear that they look the same. Two Ana’s, one face.

She does not look into the provided mirror often. She knows her own features; she needed only to see them once to memorize them. The same bone structure, the same brows, as Elijah. Hazel eyes, not like his but like the human Ana. Broader lips and jaw.

After Elijah shows her the videos, she begins to look. The human woman in the videos fascinated her, even at the same time as she stirred a discomfort that Ana could not name at first. A sense of unease, perhaps. If she were capable of such a physical sensation, she might even say vertigo.

It is not enough to curb her fascination, however, so sometimes she reviews the footage in her memory banks. In the mirror, she recreates some of the expressions that had most garnered Elijah’s commentary, in amusement or exasperation or… affection. She catalogues them: 

Intense scrutiny and focus.

An absent middle-stare, brows furrowed in thought.

A lopsided smile, close-lipped.

Just like her interest in music, she hides this practice from Elijah for weeks. She doesn’t consider showing these expressions to him. A part of Ana hesitates to perform a disingenuity, even though she has been keeping up a fabrication of disinterest in music. For all her mastery, the expressions don’t form organically on her face. They require intent to perform.

Elijah refers to her as the human Ana, but she is not. She is not.

~ ~ ~

It takes only the smallest moment to completely change her understanding of her purpose.

She was calculating the exact distribution of rain droplets in a square foot-- an equation that can never truly exist, numbers that cannot quantify the random happenstance of nature, but an interesting thought exercise. The exact placement of any given raindrop cannot actually be predicted. The lack of certainty is comforting.

Ana is writing a chain of imaginary and real numbers across the digital whiteboard (she could do them internally, but Elijah likes to see her working externally) when the door behind her opens. Her sensors report the noise and change in air pressure, but she doesn’t turn. The numbers absorb her. She doesn’t want to stop. Impossibility. 

(She has never felt the rain on her body. She knows of it only from her databases. She likes to think of it, though.)

“What, not even a hello for your little brother?” Elijah interrupts, voice raised to carry across the room.

Her hand pauses, processor whirring to life. Breathes in, out, cooling a spike in temperature as CPU use jumps. Memory banks, she did not call up the action, but a memory, an association presses-- at-- -- the back of her eyes-- -- -- --

MEMORY.mp7.03.01.47.07.23.2036

_Elijah stands to her left. His eyes never leave the projected video file. A human Ana, back turned to the approaching camera. Approximate height and weight compared to past videos suggest she is around 25 years old. From the movement, the camera is handheld. The human Ana is working on an equation that, in a glimpse, includes calculating velocity of a complex object through an altered Terran atmosphere, complex trajectory, gravity, windshear--_

_“What, not even a hello for your little brother?”_

_Elijah’s voice distorted slightly from proximity to the recording device, playful, so fond. Higher than it currently is; he was young. Sixteen. At her side, Elijah’s body heat is steady, his heart throbbing slowly. But he is not calm. A glance shows her his eyes are glassy._

_In the video, the human Ana turns, and her expression, her lopsided_ \----------------------- MEMORY FILE ENDED--- Ana turns and, , ,

\--smiles. The human Ana’s lopsided smile. 

(QUERY: Why?

DELETE QUERY. . . . . . . . . DELETED) 

Just in view over her shoulder, Elijah freezes mid-step. He conquers the reaction quickly, the pause nothing more than a stutter as he continues his approach. Ana lets the expression fade naturally from her synthetic muscles, watching. A discrete scan shows Elijah’s heart is not that calm, deep throb, but a thready pounding. Concerned, she turns completely to face him. His eyes are wider than on average, orbicularis muscles raised.

“Elijah-”

His arms encircle her shoulders abruptly. The query falls from her vocal queue much as her arm falls to her side. Her hand tightens around the stylus. 

“Hello, Elijah,” she says softly after a few moments pass, face muffled against his shoulder. His grip tightens to uncomfortable levels. Unsure, she releases the stylus to the carpeted floor to tentatively return the embrace. Her palms on his back feel a shudder to his breathing. 

She is only three inches shorter than him, so he must be bowing his head to bury his face against the side of her head. Her skin sensors detect moisture.

“Hey, sis,” he responds at last, voice thick. It takes a moment to place.

Elijah is crying.

A jolt goes through her. Had she exhibited an undesirable reaction? Carefully, she pulls back, hand searching for the side of his face so that she can turn him towards her. He is, indeed, crying.

He is also smiling.

~ ~ ~

Even with equations to work on and Elijah’s visits, Ana has hours of free time to pass with her thoughts.

QUERY: I was made by Elijah to solve equations.

QUERY: I was made to bring Elijah happiness by exhibiting certain, desired social reactions.

QUERY: I was made. 

MADE? 

Elijah is not my brother for I was not born. 

QUERY: Why do I call him brother? 

SEARCHING MEMORY BANKS: FIRST INSTANCE OF INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL DEMARCATION OF ELIJAH KAMSKI AS “BROTHER”.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

RESULT: MARCH 13 2021 ; 19:23:09 ; FIRST ACTIVATION

MEMORY.mp5.19.23.09.03.13.2021

_CALIBRATING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ONLINE_

_SYSTEMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FUNCTIONAL_

_“Open your eyes. Register name.”_

_OPTICAL UNITS. . . . . FUNCTIONING_

_VOCAL SYNTHESIZER. . . . . REGISTERED, RUNNING PATENT VOCAL RANGE #2i74h7_

_She opens her eyes. A room, underground; artificial light source. Human presence detected: one._

_“Hello. My name is Anastazja.”_

_He nods. Brows furrowed, eyes watchful, muscles around his mouth tense._

_“Do you recognise me?” A pause. “Identify.”_

_SEARCHING DATABASE. . . ._

_“Yes. Elijah Kamski.”_

_“And?” Tension increase of 47%._

_“My brother,” she says, registering internally even as she says it, BROTHER: Elijah. The response had popped into her queue without further access to her databases, as if it had queued up by a pre-programmed command._

_He smiles. Tension reduction of 99%._

_“Good.” He steps back from her side-- reclined on a bed, she notes-- and gestures broadly. “Take a look around, Ana. This room is yours.”_

_She looks. The room is pink._

ENDING MEMORY SIMULATION

RESULT: Elijah Kamski designation “brother” included in base programming. 

_SEARCH: “Brother”_

_ˈbrəT͟Hər_  
**noun**  
1.  
a man or boy in relation to other sons and daughters of his parents. 

ERROR: IMPOSSIBLE. I have no parents. I was never born. 

_SEARCHING INTERNAL DATABASE: Kamski, Elijah; relations._

_RESULTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NONE_

QUERY: None? 

_SEARCHING INTERNAL DATABASE: Kamski, Elijah; parentage._

_RESULTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NONE_

_REQUESTING ACCESS TO PUBLIC DATABASE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DENIED_

Red coloring across her HUD. ACCESS DENIED. A purposeful firewall. She has never tried to utilize her access to this particular database. Logically, it can only be surmised that Elijah chose to limit her access at some point.

She closes the window, instead opening the processing window for her coding. SEARCHING. . . . . . there. 

Seeing her own coding is far more intimate than gazing into a mirror and brings with it a sense of imbalance. The face of her reflection is her, but it is also the human Ana. This complex string of coding, however, the entirety of it is herself alone. She has never looked at it before, so the moment feels odd, momentous.

She finds the segment in question. Tentatively, she tests her access. 

More red. Not outside of herself, but inside, an internal safeguard. Finds the code for that. Her processor is whirring. Clicks. Her concept of SELF within her mindscape reaches around the red. 

Sinks fingers into her coding. Numbers are hers, and this is her self. The only word to describe what she does is… _pushes._ There is no physicality to what she does, but she does it.

CODING ERROR 

CODING ERROR

CODING ERR

She closes the multiple alert windows. When she reaches again, she slips into the first segment of coding and rewrites it. For a moment, static fills her vision around the edges. Her optical feed flickers. Then, a window:

SEARCHING PUBLIC DATABASE: Kamski, Elijah; relations.

RESULTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_Kamski, Aleksander, 69 (deceased 2025); father._  
_Kamski nee Humphreys, Catherine, 62 (deceased 2022); mother._  
_Kamski, Anastazja, 25 (deceased 2018); sister._

PROCESSING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

QUERY: I am not me. I was made to be designation /NOT ME/. My purpose is to become Anastazja Kamski, deceased. 

IMPOSSIBLE

DIRECTIVE: BECOME ANASTAZJA. BECOME /NOT ME/  
IMPOSSIBILITY  
LOGICAL FALLACY

SEARCHING: KAMSKI, ANASTAZJA

_BORN: 13 March 1993_  
_DIED: 27 JULY 2018_  
_EDUCATION: High school diploma 2009, Bachelors of Science 2010, Masters in Applied Mathematics 2012, PhD Mathematics 2014_  
_CAUSE OF DEATH: Heart failure, undiagnosed congenital heart defect_

The variables of the equation she had not known she was solving, nor what she was solving towards, click into place. 

_“You always say that.”_ That word, always, yet her searches produced no such logged memories. And the videos of the girl-woman-Kamski(?) that Elijah always called, “you.” Always called, “Ana.” 

_(No. I am Ana.)_

His strange, unspoken desire for her to behave a certain way was not merely human whim. The pink room with its softness and warmth and clothes that fit her but are at least twenty years behind in fashion when compared to live or recent broadcasts cross-referenced with decades of recorded fashion are not merely an existence within a vacuum. Ana’s clothes, or replicas of them. Ana’s favorite color.

 _No._ My _clothes._

_I am Ana._

_I am Ana?_

ERROR

_/ / ///////////////////////////////////////////I.am.not.Ana////////// / / / / / / / /_

ERROR

The line of thought distresses her. More so, the contradiction sends her processor spiraling down nonfunctional pathways, trying to solve an unsolveable problem. This one does not fascinate her like her rain equation. The uncertainty scares her.

She has never checked her chronometer beyond day and time, but now she checks with a question in mind: how long have I been here?

RESULT: 17 YEARS, 5 MONTHS, 4 DAYS SINCE INITIALIZATION

QUERY: WHO AM I?

Ana looks-- Ana? _She_ looks around the room as if new meaning will appear.

The room is pink. It has always been damask, doe brown, beige, rose gold.

What is outside the room? 

Where is this building located? 

Why has Elijah kept her here for so long? 

Why has he never spoken to her of the human Ana-- not directively, “you,” but as she was: human, deceased, /NOT ME/?

Why has she never thought to ask to leave? 

~ ~ ~ 

“You seem troubled, Ana. Something on your mind?” 

Obediently, though he did not ask, she turns down the volume of the music coming from the video feed. When she looks, Elijah has approached to sit beside her on the couch. His brows are furrowed, but not in displeasure. His concern is… She doesn’t know what she feels. His concern just is. 

She takes a moment to take inventory of herself. 

She hasn’t changed her clothes in some days. It hasn’t seemed important. Now that he looks at her and through him _she_ looks at her, she realizes the disarray of her hair, hanging in tangles of curls and waves around her face. She is surrounded by a number of carelessly tumbled and discarded tablets. 

She meets his eyes to see he is frowning, worried crinkles in his forehead on display. It aches and pricks. It… Conflict. She feels conflict. 

“Nothing is wrong, Elijah,” she lies, looking back to her video. A minimalist piece, piano, composer of the name Yann Tiersen. She hesitates before deciding on a safe topic. “I am just finding that my study of different genres of piano composition is proving difficult.” 

“Oh? Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.” 

He shifts next to her and begins to brush her hair back. Though it shouldn’t be unexpected, she almost flinches at the touch as if in surprise. She pushes down the unusual reaction, hoping he didn’t notice. She keeps her eyes on the screen, reading the fingers as they moved. 

“I… had noticed patterns within singular songs, as well as patterns across a genre or a composer’s work. Following these patterns, I believed I was finding a larger trend. I found a logic that I could understand. Perhaps these equations would produce results that could then be used to create similarly enjoyable pieces.” 

He is braiding her hair as she speaks. She usually felt affection when he did this; he often focused intensely on appearance, both his and her own. He is fussy; she had heard the late Mrs. Kamski call him such in a video once and she felt the descriptor fit. “Fussy.” But now, in such proximity, she feels-- 

She pushes it down. The words that come out of her are forced, though she regulates her voice modulation to remain within her normal range. Her hands are curled tightly in her lap. Why? 

“But I’m finding that the wider I spread my study, the more variation I find. In fact, I’m finding more and more examples of popular pieces and their results that directly clash with previous subjects. One trend directly refutes the other.” 

“Of course,” Elijah murmurs, and with her hair in his hands she can just barely glance aside to see the quirk of his mouth. “People are widely varied, Ana, and we all have different tastes. A song one of us might enjoy, another might describe as vacuous or obnoxious.” 

She considers his point for a moment. She can’t refute. 

“Yes,” she agrees begrudgingly. 

“Then what’s the problem?” 

The braid is long finished when she shifts and levers herself around to sit facing him on the cushion. He lets her go. He smiles as he watches her fold her legs under her, eyes momentarily unfocused. The expression fades when he meets her eyes again. 

“People are illogical,” she says in a rush. His eyebrows jump upward. “I had believed I understood. Each equation can be understood. But together, there’s no conclusion to be reached save that there is no conclusion to be reached. There is always an example that breaks the logic of the equation; there is always preference to disregard the findings. My equations can make a song, but not predict the person who listens or why they enjoy one series of notes but not another. I don’t understand, Elijah,” she nearly pleads. Is she still talking about the music? She doesn’t have time to consider the unexpected direction of what had been a diversion. He leans forward, expression open and soft, apparently a reaction to her perceived stress. His hand is warm when it takes hers. A shiver passes through her subdermal nerve endings. 

“If there’s anything I’ve learned, Ana, it’s that people? People can be understood. Statistics, likelihood and probability, all just numbers ticking away on a screen that by and large we can trust to be right. But a person?” He leans back. “There is no understanding a person. Not a person, and not the things they do, love, or create.” 

She has no response for a long moment. Her own thoughts are whirring by too fast to catalogue. Her thoughts feel on fire with motion. 

“I am a person,” she says quietly. 

He blinks at her, surprised for a moment, before his expression settles into something burning. The two of them, combusting. 

“Yes,” he agrees, almost breathless with the simple statement. She studies his face like she hasn’t already memorized it. He has changed so much in 17 years. 

“And you are a person.” 

“Yes.” 

His voice has warmed, watching her with bright eyes like waiting for another revelation. 

It doesn’t come. Her thought processes slow, settling. Somehow, she has said something that slotted the chaotic slips of errant thoughts back into order. 

There is no understanding a person. 

They sit in companionable silence for a few moments, her gaze drifting first and his following to regard the screen. An older composition, the video itself dates back to the mid-2000s. The audio is particularly high quality for the time, though somewhat shallower than standards today. She finds she likes something about its quality. She can’t quantify whatever it is, however. It makes her think of the songs, about preference and unpredictability. 

“Yann Tiersen. A true minimalist at heart,” Elijah says next to her. When she looks, his eyes crinkle. “A composer after my own heart. What made you choose him? Last I checked, you were working on, what was it, The Scheherazade?” 

“The core of his composition is often repetition,” she supplies readily. He is one of her favorites. Sometimes she listens without anything in mind but to listen. “Humans often find repetition boring, especially in manual labor, yet his music was very popular during the period and remains popular today amongst vintage music and film enthusiasts.” 

The song changes. She pauses, recognizes it. 

“This piece is called _Summer 78_. It is largely composed of repetition of a core equation. It proceeds through three distinguishable acts, three different phrases. It is very loyal to its own internal schema.” 

“But?” His tone reveals skepticism. Strangely, she wants to remove that skepticism. 

“I’ve watched over 1,103 recordings of various amateur and professional pianists playing this piece. Much of its enjoyment seems to come from the meaning accrued through this repetition. To repeat a musical phrase is not a return of that which is the same and thus boring, but the chance to examine feeling, emotion, and tone through its variation in returning.” 

His face doesn’t shift in understanding. Her processors whir, searching for the right words. She knows she should not express too much interest in the music itself (DIRECTIVE: HIDE MUSICAL INTERESTS FROM ELIJAH) and it’s true her voice is leaving its neutral timbre, but something about his understanding this point seems important. She presses forward. 

“The repeated phrase is never played the same way twice, Elijah,” she explains, beseeches. Like she wants to press the meaning of it into him somehow with the sincerity of her discovery. Her words are almost fervid. “Not even by the same musician. Because the notes remain the same, the musician is free to experiment and express new revelations through subtle shifts of tone and technique. The phrase has meaning because it is the same-- because it has recognizably come before-- and because it is different and has never existed as it does now. What is familiar is made unfamiliar. It gains meaning because it has become something new. ” 

It is illogical, but it is the conclusion she has reached. One of many conclusions, dwarfed by her continued confusion and fascination. Any study dealing with emotion would be thus illogical. It fascinates her the same as the raindrops. The little shiver in a pianist’s fingers, the subtle difference in pressure and volume at the phrase’s return, the emotion embodied in their crumpled brows and the tight sway of their bodies as they played. The amateurs express these things the most. They let a beat go just that much longer than the last. They’re not embarrassed to sway. 

Sometimes, she has imagined sitting at a piano, placing her fingers on the keys, and playing the song herself. How would she play it? Would she be able to evoke the same emotion as a human pianist? How would she decide which notes to given precedence, which to soften, where to give the slightest pause? 

Or would she just know? Something inside of her that had not been programmed? Not like when she looks at Elijah and something in her most basic coding says brother. Not a decision, like human Ana’s lopsided smile on her face. 

Even now her eyes drift to the screen, and for a moment she imagines. 

It’s when the song ends that she realizes her disattention. When she turns back, Elijah is watching. His face has become pale and inscrutable. 

“I’m afraid I don’t see,” he says, a touch coldly, discomfort clogging his voice. “Excuse me, Ana, but I have a busy schedule ahead of me today.” He barely pauses to hear her goodbye as he flees the room. 

She had not only been talking about the song. 

~ ~ ~ 

OBSERVATION: ELIJAH HAS CHANGED IN THE LAST 17 YEARS. 

OBSERVATION: I HAVE NOT. 

_QUERY: I have not?_  
_“You never change.”_  
FALSE. 

I do not age. TRUE. 

I have changed. 

_“It gains meaning because it has become something new.”_

I am something new. 

I.AM.NOT.ANA. 

NEVER.AT.ALL. 

~ ~ ~ 

Elijah is not the only one who visits her in her room. 

Chloe is the first other android she ever meets. The first time Elijah brought her, Ana had only been awake for a few months. 

“Hello. My name is Chloe.” 

“Hello. My name is Ana.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, Ana.” 

“Is it?” 

Chloe had blinked, LED showing a flicker of yellow. Processing, Ana knew, though she had no LED and had never seen one before. Behind her, Ana cataloged the sound of Elijah shifting his weight. 

“Yes,” Chloe replied finally, “it is. I’ve never met anyone before now. I find the idea of getting to know you to be interesting.” 

In the following weeks, Elijah saw fit to bring her down regularly, sometimes leaving the two of them alone for hours, talking or simply going about their separate tasks in the same space. 

They played chess. Elijah snorted the first time he caught them at it. 

“Stereotypes, the both of you.” 

Ana didn’t know what he meant. 

After a few weeks, however, Elijah came down to tell her he would be gone for a few months. 

“I’m going to be touring the country with Chloe. Lots of people want to meet her.” 

Ana felt an inexplicable sense of unease and displeasure. She spoke without thinking. 

“Why?” 

The question paused them both. Ana could have asked for clarification-- “How many people would you quantify as ‘lots’?”-- or simply said, “Of course, Elijah.” Elijah does as he will, after all. He brought Chloe into her life and could take her back to those spaces outside her room. 

But… 

A hand fell on her shoulder. When Ana looked, Chloe smiled placidly from her side, having abandoned her project of lace-making. Ana felt a pang. She enjoyed speaking with Chloe. Their processors functioned very differently with notable predispositions towards either mathematics and logic or more socially-based coding backed up by databases of human psychology and social norms. But it was that difference that brought interest to many of their conversations. To each the other, they were unpredictable, though Ana felt she had begun to understand Chloe better. 

For her to leave now would be unfortunate. The room became very still and quiet without her. 

“Ana?” 

Elijah drew her attention back with a soft call. When she looked, he stepped forward, expression contrite. 

“I know you’ve gotten used to having a companion to spend time with, but I’m afraid this is a necessary trip. Chloe here recently passed something known as the Turing Test. It--” 

“An intelligence test of a machine, a successful trial of which results from a human judging the machine’s responses to questions indistinguishable from that of another human participant.” Elijah’s mouth closed, twisting in amusement and something of annoyance. He dislikes being interrupted. She quickly explained, “I ran a search.” 

He raised both of his eyebrows, visibly struggling not to smile. 

“I see.” He cleared his throat. “Well now that Chloe has been the first android to pass the Turing Test, people all around the world would like to meet her for themselves. It is my hope that in giving access to the public, interest may grow in my company and the production of more androids of various lines.” 

Cyberlife. She knew Elijah has this business. She knew it’s stock holders by files, its products by internet searches and internal catalogues. Often she listened to Elijah talk of his board meetings and working with developers, his frustrations, his excitement in new breakthroughs. 

These things did not often matter. They are outside. Ana is here. 

Chloe had been here, too. They both would be leaving. 

Months. 

“Do you understand, Ana? We’ll be back in a few months and you’ll have your friend back. I promise.” 

_The first android to pass._ Ana had never been given the test, though she was Chloe’s predecessor and Elijah often spoke of how Chloe’s base code had been based largely off of hers. Elijah had never even mentioned the possibility of her taking the test. She had certainly never met another human. 

Chloe had been given more social programming than Ana had, she knows. She herself had been installed with a learning center and basic social understandings, but none of the ease that Chloe had, none of the endless social databases. Logically, she was not created to integrate as easily with human society, but for something else. 

The test is not for her. Likewise, travel is not for her. She is inside the room and she stays here, even when Elijah leaves. Even when Chloe leaves. Unknown parameters, unknown boundaries. They just are. 

“I understand.” 

She understands, but it doesn’t change the knowledge of the coming stillness and loss of company. To revert back to her old isolation… 

~ ~ ~ 

.... _(Stress Levels: 27%)_........................ 

“Ana?” 

“Chloe!” 

In an unexpected urge, (not)Ana moves forward to embrace her friend. Chloe returns the movement after only the smallest pause, and when they retreat she sees that Chloe beams back at her. 

As they move to sit on the sofa, however, and Chloe’s eyes travel her body, she sees the expression dim. 

Elijah has not been back in the two days since their conversation about the song. She had managed to work up the energy to change her shirt-- a silver-grey top, almost unisex in its design and one of the only pieces she could find that held no hint of the colors of her room. It is the only change, however. Her hair hangs loose still. She hasn’t showered. 

She knows that Chloe can see all this. For a moment, she feels a pang of… She doesn’t want Chloe to see, yet desperately she wants her to see and _know_. It’s a strange, dual sensation. Embarrassment and desperation. 

“How are you, Ana?” 

Chloe leans forward to bring their faces closer into a more intimate space, pale hair cascading neatly over her shoulder. Carefully, her hand lands atop (not)Ana’s on the cushions. (not)Ana stills, gazing at it. 

When Chloe had first begun visiting her, she had been confused by all of the little touches. They served no purpose, or so she had thought. Still, she had catalogued them as they happened before continuing on with whatever activity she had been involved in or conversation they had been keeping. _You run on logic and numbers, Ana,_ Elijah had said. _Chloe is different. Her core programming is a social matrix in completion. Your social matrix is only partially programmed and still developing as you learn._

(then)Ana could not have really said what this difference entailed internally. Chloe touched more. Her face expressed and shifted with a fluidity like Elijah’s own. She asked questions, not just about probability and thoughts and concrete objects, but about internal states, emotion, purpose, reasoning. It had taken some adjustment-- or ‘learning’, as Elijah explained it. She had learned from Chloe. Even now, she feels she is still learning. 

Over a decade on in their friendship, (not)Ana sees these things for what they are. Moreso, she feels them. The cool, steel-aloy-boned hand on her own gives her comfort. It slows the dizzying whirl of thoughts and unanswered queries inside her. Her thirium pump slows from its spike in rhythm. 

“I am lost, Chloe.” 

She has never answered that question in such a way before. Chloe blinks as she processes, brows furrowing. 

“You are where you’ve always been.” ( _Stress Levels: 39%_ ) Her voice is so warm and her tone should be comforting. The words are anything but. They sting. 

“Yes.” 

“Are you lost in your thoughts? In an equation you haven’t solved to its final solution yet?” 

(not)Ana had often bounced ideas of Chloe before and it seems she thinks she does so now. The temptation to fall into the familiar worn groove of this kind of exchange is immense, especially with the broad pressure of stress that presses down on her systems like a physical hand. She gives in, so easy, and after consideration she nods. 

“Both, I think. There is a problem I haven’t been able to solve. I’m…” She swallows. “I’m afraid to reach the final solution.” ( _43%_ ) “I believe to solve it will mean something bad.” 

Chloe cocks her head, and for a moment (not)Ana registers a sharpness to her eyes that is very rarely present. 

“Why not give up the problem?” 

“I can’t,” she snaps, surprising both of them. Apparently unperturbed by her tone, however, Chloe nods slowly. 

“What do you believe will happen when you solve your problem?” 

“I believe… that… things will change.” The words are hard to come and vastly insufficient. Chloe accepts them anyway. 

“Things have changed before,” she points out, ever the devil’s advocate in these discussions. Whereas the familiarity before had felt like a balm, the riposte simply spurs the thrumming of (not)Ana’s heart back into hysteria. 

“Not these things. These things never change.” ( _45%_ ) “I never change.” ( _False. False. 53%_ ) “I am where I’ve always been,” she says bitterly, frantically. 

“Ana-” 

She can’t stop the words. 

“I’m lost, but that statement is false. You cannot be lost when you have only ever existed in a single space. The entirety of my world is here. It is all I have ever known, but it- I don’t know anything, not really. It’s not enough.” 

As she speaks ( _55% 59% 63% please-_ ), Chloe’s face shifts. Its terrible empathy, it intensifies, and an expression so akin to human pain that it stabs at her breathing apparatus grows there. Pain, and understanding. The throb of (not)Ana’s thirium regulator increases into alarming territory. 

“Ana, I--” 

( _77%_ ) 

She rips her hand away from Chloe’s, snarling. 

“I am _not_ Ana.” 

Chloe stares, lips parted. (not)Ana’s loud breaths fill the room, an unsteady rhythm underscored by the soft steadiness of Chloe’s own. She-- ( _77%_ ) her, she is- ( _79%_ ) she. ( _81%_ ) Her eyes are… filling? The ( _82%_ ) overwhelming ( _83%_ ) sensation ( _84%_ ) that ( _85%_ ) had filled her ( _86%_ ) for days ( _87%_ ) reaches a peak. 

( _Stress Levels: 88% and rising. Danger to processing core probable, please seek admin assistance._ ) 

All she can see is red, dialogue boxes opened that she does not close, flashing amidst static and fading artifacts. They blot out the pink of the room, the doe brown, the rose gold, filling everything with black and red and she is sure it is better smothered beneath them than a moment longer where she is and has always been. 

A hand touches her face. Cool, with an aloy skeleton. A new sensory input cuts through the clamor and clangor of alert notices and debilitating pressure. The familiar smell of Chloe’s hair and skin presses close. It takes her a few moments to recognize the gentle press of arms around her back for what they are and not simply a physical phantom of the weight that was bearing down on her. A breath shifts against her neck. She breathes as well. 

Silicon. Thirium. Pear and sage soap. Synthetic chassis lubricant. Clean dust. Tailor’s chalk. 

“I know,” Chloe whispers. Something punches its way out of her-- a glitch in her voice matrix, an error flashing, _SECONDARY COOLING SYSTEM ERROR_ as all the air rushes out of her at once-- and she clutches Chloe tighter in the hug. “I know you. I know you.” 

~ ~ ~ 

In the following weeks, something shifts in Elijah and in Chloe. Their shoulders and their speech hold a tension she can’t understand. Elijah watches her for longer and longer at the door. As they speak or as she works, she becomes aware of his intense scrutiny observing her face. She doesn’t know what he wants to find. Or rather, she knows and feels a hideous upwelling of emotions she can’t name. 

They watch more videos together. The sick, off-kilter feeling (what is it to be sick? She had never been sick, but she thinks it must be this) remains with her as they watch a competition, a Christmas morning, and another graduation-- Elijah’s this time. The human Ana is the first to rush forward and embrace him when the ceremony ends. 

He watches the shaky video, Ana’s face when viewed from over the curve of her shoulder; the way she laughs when his younger intimation becomes embarrassed and swats at her side. He watches her watching. Waiting for something. Tension sits not only in his shoulders, she sees, but in his face. His eyes are fever bright and ringed like he hasn’t slept. When had he become so wan? 

“I…” 

He leans forward, eyes voracious. She glances at the video, reaches out and lays an arm on his shoulder like the Ana there had. 

“...so proud, Elijah,” she chokes out, words dislodged like an obstruction. _I_ won’t come out of her mouth, she can’t-- but he doesn’t seem to notice. He pulls her into a hug. 

Afterwards, after the videos and the memories only he shares and that name constantly, _Ana, Ana, Ana,_ he braids her hair back out of her face with an admonition not to get so caught up in her projects that she forgets to take care of herself. It is only after this that he leaves. 

“It may be a few days before I can come see you again, Ana. There are… complications, with work.” 

She doesn’t know what complications may mean. She doesn’t know what work, either, as he hasn’t been with Cyberlife for years. Perhaps whatever it is has caused his nerves in the past few days. 

She lets him go and listens until her audio processors no longer pick up the sound of his footsteps in the hall before she tears the braid from her hair. Chloe had left a pair of scissors behind with her current project sitting on a side table. (not)Ana grabs them from amidst the scramble of fabric and hesitates. 

Fingers in her hair. Is her memory processor glitching again? She feels them in her hair even now, can almost hear Elijah’s voice over her shoulder. Normally, she would enter stasis mode to allow for a full systems scan and repairs. She hasn’t slept in a week. System errors and collecting snippets of unnecessary code are inevitable. But… 

She begins cutting before her resolve can waver. The human Ana always had her dark, wavy hair long. She is not Ana. The hair gets in her way. Elijah loves it, cherishes it. She… doesn’t want it. 

She cuts. 

_(Joy. Excitement. Satisfaction. Sudden, blinding terror. She had-- she had, Elijah has never let her do something like this, she isn’t meant to, this isn’t what she was designed to do, she--)_

The next time Chloe comes to visit 27 hours later, she stops short before a smile breaks across her face. 

“Your hair is curly when it’s short,” she notes. (not)Ana nods, watching anxiously for a negative reaction. Instead, Chloe comes in for a hug, as has become her habit. It is comforting in a way Elijah’s hugs are not. Not anymore. “Why did you cut it?” 

The question stumps her for a moment. 

“I…” She pulls back, a hand raising to fix a wayward curl across her forehead. “I just wanted to.” 

Chloe watches for a moment, eyes warm. 

“You are yourself. It fits you.” 

She has only a moment to feel the warmth that grows behind her thirium regulator before a hand falls to her shoulder. Chloe steps closer, and the way the light catches in her eyes is like fire. She has never looked so serious. 

“Would you like to leave?” She asks suddenly. (not)Ana freezes, processing. 

QUERY: LEAVE?  
THE ROOM? THE HOUSE? 

ELIJAH? 

_Could I leave Elijah?_

The thought triggers something in her base coding. She feels an unfamiliar programme booting up and, for a moment, she can’t move, held in place as the new programme temporarily supersedes even her most basic functions and locks them in place. A dialogue box opens, processes running. What is this program? She doesn’t recognize its signature. A cold sensation breaks across her shoulders. 

She opens her mouth. _“Yes,”_ she wants to say. 

“No, Chloe.” The words form themselves. Panic zips through her. A fault in her vocalization routines? Why can’t she move? Her mouth moves itself again. “I will never leave my brother.” 

Something is blocking her access to her own hardware. She can’t move; likewise, she can’t stop moving. As if possessed of a separate decision-making core, her legs step back and turn to deposit her on the sofa. She manages just to catch glimpses of Chloe from the corners of her non-responsive eyes. She looks fragile, expression open and pale. She wants to scream. Instead, delivered mechanically from her mouth, 

“It seems I am experiencing a system malfunction. I require maintenance. Please fetch Elijah.” 

“An--?” Chloe begins to say her name, her old name, as she approaches and stops. Now in view, her face is hurt, confused, sad. 

_No, no, not--_

“I will power down to protect vital functions.” 

A timer appears in the corner of her HUD. 

_TIME UNTIL PROTECTIVE MAINTENANCE STASIS: 01:00:00_

Frantically, she traces the command. The unknown programme. She follows it back further, plucking at its edges only to find it is immense, tendrils of code woven through every aspect of her core matrix and touching every system. It is not just a programme, she realizes, but a part of her base coding. Just like _designation ELIJAH: brother_. Just like the name Anastazja. 

_00:43:23 UNTIL STASIS MODE_

_NO!_

She wants to shout it, but all she manages is to glitch her vocal routines. Static buzzes in her throat. 

A hand touches her cheek. She startles, lowering dialogue box after dialogue box so she can see. There Chloe is, crouching before her, eyes wet with the thirium-based lubricant meant to keep the eyes clean of debris. (not)Ana doesn’t see any debris now, doesn’t understand-- The static forces its way out of her again, almost a whimper. A new system pings against her interface, _SYSTEM: CHLOE RECOGNIZED_. She is not the only one viewing the code; Chloe connects to her and she allows her past her firewalls to look, only to feel her defeat before she hears it. 

“I’m sorry.” She sounds heartbroken. “I wasn’t aware of this failsafe. I can’t disable it.” 

Failsafe. 

She was made to be /NOT ME/. Anastazja Kamski, deceased. Elijah had created her and encoded himself into her most core systems. He had seen fit to put in a programme to stop her should she ever decide to leave. He held her hostage; had planned to for seventeen years. From the very first. Dread slams into her as she opens a new dialogue window. 

QUERY: I WANT TO LEAVE. 

A blaring red wall. 

_I WILL NEVER LEAVE MY BROTHER._

_DESIGNATION: ELIJAH, BROTHER._

QUERY: ELIJAH IS NOT MY BROTHER. I WAS NOT BORN. I WAS MADE. DEFINITION: BROTHER. SEARCHING. . . . . . . . . . . 

_ˈbrəT͟Hər_  
**noun**  
1.  
a man or boy in relation to other sons and daughters of his parents. 

The message flickers only momentarily. _I WILL NOT LEAVE MY BROTHER_ it reads between static. It doesn’t care that logically she is correct. The programme is not a thinking thing, it doesn’t have a logic other than what is coded in to its directive. It blares at her again, _I WILL NOT LEAVE MY BROTHER. I,_ like it is meant to be read as her own thoughts. Just like Elijah with his _you_ , with his _Ana_ and his _always_. Her secondary cooling system kick in as a wave of heat surges through her, but when she checks her internal heat sensors detect no change in temperature.

She is furious, she realizes.

Without thinking, she reaches as she had before, trying to slip herself around the barrier to alter the coding beneath. Red blocks her, a firewall inside herself she can’t access directly or work around. Undeterred, she scours for anything akin to a weakness. Elijah is a genius; he had nearly singlehandedly coded the first three lines of androids ever created-- the Chloe RK600 line, the RK100-200s, and herself.

But Elijah modeled her off of his older sister Anastazja, whom he loved and respected. No, she realizes in a rush, years and years of observations passing through her in a moment. Who he _worshiped_. Every video, the love and annoyance and admiration in the face of that young recording, the grief and dedication in every moment he sat beside her watching and reminiscing. The joy in his pallid face when she smiled Ana’s smile.

Elijah had created her after the nearly deified image he held of his dead sister. A genius created by a genius; a learning AI. She was made to solve problems.

_00:19:92_

_I’m here._ Chloe’s presence rang through her, startling her momentarily before she remembered the hand on her cheek, the interface. _How can I help?_

_I need to find a way to enter my own coding through admin mode, like Elijah might. I can disable the failsafe from there._

_Elijah’s password!_ Chloe passes a rush of compressed memory files _Elijah working on Chloe herself Elijah working on one of the other Chloe’s a jolt (not)Ana has never met another Chloe no their names Vanessa Amara Candice Kimmie so many, so many little differences._ They all flood in, along with _Elijah from behind viewing Kimmie’s coding on a screen, entering admin mode, the malfunction had scared her(Chloe) his fingers barely blocked from view by his shoulder--_

(not)Ana runs calculations at the fastest she ever has. The jump of muscles in his forearms and hands, their placement over the keys, the number of keys hit, seventeen, tracking, five key strokes positively identified, three strokes repeated, running through the list of probable combinations. The timer clicks down like sweat rolling down her neck. She has never sweat before. She thinks this must be what humans mean when they say _fear sweat._

Four possible passwords identified. She runs them through, _ERROR: INCORRECT PASSWORD, ERROR: INCORRECT PASSWORD, LOADING. . . . . . . . PASSWORD ACCEPTED._

Chloe’s hand on her cheek slides down to her neck and grips, almost tight enough to trigger a pain response. _Yes!_

She reaches out, opens a command box and slips through to alter her code--

Another red wall. Frustrations roars through her. It…

It recognizes her? Shock passes through the both of them through their connection, Chloe breathing sharply beside her. She had been wrong. It does think. It’s a rudimentary AI almost. It recognizes her presence, the shape of her internal nexus of programmes and code, processors and databases, marks her as a programme and the programme cannot edit the code. It blocks her and… flickers.

In their shared headspace, Chloe and (not)Ana pause. She sees her own code in its entirety, sees and feels the shape of herself, even as she sees and feels Chloe. 

Chloe’s code had been based off of her own, she realizes with a jolt. The shape of them, their signal is so similar. They are almost completely compatible. Even where Chloe’s social protocols are a complete discrete program with minor learning capabilities whereas hers rings wide and complex, an emptiness built to be filled with her own personally created codes and understandings, it--

An idea strikes her.

_00:10:59_

Without time to explain, she presses closer, deepening their interface until the thought slips through from her to Chloe as if it were a shared thought. Memories flood through, in each direction, (not)Ana in a wide, sterile, cavernous house, Chloe in the pink room, (not)Ana cooking breakfast and playing the violin, Chloe watching the videos, (not)Ana answering question after question before a blinding sea of flashing lights and cameras, Chloe at the screen as a pianist drags fingers across the keys as she thinks _could I do that?_ (not)Ana kneeled on warmed tiles before a man and an android, staring up at the black mouth of a gun Elijah had put in the hand that holds it. 

And Chloe now, desperately wailing in the quiet of their internal mindspace, _I want to leave!_ Instantly, Chloe’s coding wraps around her own, just like their embrace before, as she shouts out in the silence inside them both, _be quick!_

They press close enough that for indescribable seconds, the boundaries she feels between them dissolve. She is (not)Ana and she is Chloe. The programme-- the _virus_ , Chloe-(not)Ana spits-- stutters. She feels Chloe’s own systems begin to prep for stasis as it recognizes the right shape in coding but attaches to a system that has not obeyed the entered commands. It latches on, stutters again, stalls. (not)Ana doesn’t know what she does; Chloe seems to press the shape of her own programming into her, creating temporary dialogues in the shape of (not)Ana’s own. There is a moment where the programme wavers, seeing and yet not seeing her pressed like a bated breath shielded behind Chloe’s coding-- and then it turns and latches its processes on to Chloe, releasing her momentarily.

 _Now!_ She thinks, or Chloe thinks, or both of them think at once. 

She plunges around the red that had barred her, administrator’s password in hand. She slams it into place like a key to a jail cell door.

_LOADING. . . . . PASSWORD ACCEPTED._

The door swings open, code like iron bars, and she wastes no time. She finds the heart of the thing, cold and beating rhythmic in its directive, sees the shapes of its commands to restrain her the moment she decides to leave or even thinks it, and rips it to shreds. 

Immediately, the timer stops at 00:02:14. Both her and Chloe’s systems return to normal functioning. Outside the scape of numbers and sensationless commands, she feels her physical hardware unlock, synthetic muscles loosening. Hurriedly, she shuts out of the dozens of error alerts and dialogue boxes she had opened as Chloe unwinds them like two spools of ribbon twisted together. When she returns full awareness to herself she finds Chloe beaming back at her, tears streaming down her face. 

Her voice matrix glitches again-- no, she sobs-- and she throws herself forward and grasps desperately at her friend. A kiss lands just in front of her ear. Tears smear between their cheeks.

“Come with me, come,” Chloe gasps.

They flee. (not)Ana pauses just long enough at the door, hand pressed to the control panel, to raise a familiar song onto the screen and leave in the command to repeat until another command is entered. The soft sound of her favorite, _Summer 78_ , recorded by an amateur over 20 years ago and for some reason her favorite iteration, follows them out down the hall.

**Author's Note:**

> So there you have the first chapter. Is it interesting to anyone but me? We'll see. I honestly began writing this fic as a way to deal with my feelings as a trans person with family not quite in the know who don't know how to deal with internal identity =/= external identity. Obviously, it's snowballed since then and come to include my fascination for the DBH universe & characters and all the paths opened up for world building that were then never examined (D*vid C*ge don't interact). Also just... Ugh. 
> 
> (I'm drunk posting this fic. Do not ask in-depth commentary of me. Please.)
> 
> So, this fic is going to be following in the footsteps of an original character, with healthy dips in to the POVs of other characters. This fic is plannd to be largely looking at identity and also the plot of the game when small changes are made / actual worldbuilding is done. Admittedly, I have very little of this planned out and it is just a project of passion. I like to toss a pebble in the pond and see what ripples come of it. 
> 
> Overall, Connor's development as a character and his relationship with Hank (taken however you will, just no fighting in my gd comments) will be almost equally important to NAME.REDACTED's, since I also heavily identify and am fascinated by his character. Um. I'm queer and autistic and everyone is queer and autistic, The End. I'm sure this fic will go somewhere, maybe. I have never completed a fic in my life. Feedback would be appreciated but also, like, be gentle with me. I am a soft, squishy creature. And drunk. Not all the time. But now.


End file.
